Friday, February 19, 2010

"Ya'll Come Out!": Divorce Folks, What Say Ye?

Amid all the amendments that will be coming to the fore in light of the upcoming General Assembly of the Presby. Church (USA), there probably will not be an amendment concerning divorced ordained officers. Even though Jesus is quite clear about the "no no" of divorce in the Gospel of Matthew, we allow divorced people to ordained positions but not out LGBTQ people,even though Jesus said nothing toward those of us who are LGBTQ.

Hypocritical?

Along this line, there is this bit from Andrew Sullivan's blog re: the Catholic Church dropping foster care services for the D.C. area, because of the D.C. Council approving equal rights in the area of marriage:

I despair.

A simple parallel: does the Washington diocese's charities employ any people who have been civilly divorced and are now re-married under DC law? If so, how are these individuals less offensive to the teachings of the Church on the institution of marriage than a member of a gay couple provided civil marriage licenses?

Catholic doctrine is very clear: a remarried person is not remarried in the eyes of the Church, and for the Church to employ such a person would be to recognize a civil marriage that violates one of its core principles. There are infinitely more of these individuals than there are gay Catholics or gay non-Catholics who might want to help the homeless or serve the poor or provide foster care for an abandoned child. Catholic Charities might - Heaven forfend - have to provide spousal benefits to a member of a heterosexual couple violating Church doctrine about matrimony in exactly the same way. And almost certainly, they already do all the time.

Have Catholic Charities ever considered shutting down their entire city contracts for the needy because of the chance that this might happen or might have already happened? Of course not. So why this glaring inconsistency on the question of homosexuals - unless it is driven by animus against them?

I believe Andrew is right on this score.

You?

Pace!

B

2 comments:

Jen said...

I absolutely agree.

Thanks.

We have a new non traditional family lifestyle site that I think you'd enjoy called goodkin...www.WeAreGoodkin.com
Check it out. Hope you like it.

Brett Webb-Mitchell said...

Thanks Jen, for your link!
Brett